In Praise of a Dumb House
My husband Harry works in tech, and every January he makes his yearly pilgrimage to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where some 4,100 exhibitors are spread across 2.6 million square feet. The dominant concept at this year’s edition was that, very soon, anything you put in your house will be compatible with voice-activated AI services like Siri, Alexa, or HomePod. Your newest home automation systems will come equipped with sensors and jazzy master controls on an iPad.
The problem for me is that a tiny photoelectric cell you frantically wave to—rather than a switch to flick or press—rarely acknowledges me, because somehow I’m not human temperature. The same way my X-Men superpower is being completely invisible to bartenders at a party, I’m also not a good candidate to live in the alleged future home. From being locked out of my iPad for ten years to routinely spacing...
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